By hook or crook, the poor gentleman or poor lady,--let the one or the other be ever so poor,--does not often come to the last extremity of the workhouse.

There are such cases, but they are exceptional.

Mrs.
Crawley, through all her sufferings, had never yet found her cupboard to be absolutely bare, or the bread-pan to be actually empty.

But there are pangs to which, at the time, starvation itself would seem to be preferable.

The angry eyes of unpaid tradesmen, savage with an anger which one knows to be justifiable; the taunt of the poor servant who wants her wages; the gradual relinquishment of habits which the soft nurture of earlier, kinder years had made second nature; the wan cheeks of the wife whose malady demands wine; the rags of the husband whose outward occupations demand decency; the neglected children, who are learning not to be the children of gentlefolk; and, worse than all, the alms and doles of half-generous friends, the waning pride, the pride that will not wane, the growing doubt whether it be not better to bow the head, and acknowledge to all the world that nothing of the pride of station is left,--that the hand is open to receive and ready to touch the cap, that the fall from the upper to the lower level has been accomplished,--these are the pangs of poverty which drive the Crawleys of the world to the frequent entertaining of that idea of the bare bodkin.